Renowned Mexican poet Javier Sicilia, whose son Juan Francisco was killed in prohibition-related violence last year, will lead other victims and family members from Mexico to unite with victims and supporters from the U.S. and travel from San Diego to Washington, D.C., passing through the Southern U.S., then Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Baltimore.

“Our purpose is to honor our victims, to make their names and faces visible,” Sicilia said in a press statement. “We will travel across the United States to raise awareness of the unbearable pain and loss caused by the drug war – and of the enormous shared responsibility for protecting families and communities in both our countries.”

Several police officers, judges, prosecutors and other drug war veterans will escort the Caravan with a mock police vehicle decorated with anti-prohibition slogans.

“I spent decades as a police officer trying to make these drug laws work, but in the end it didn’t do one bit of good,” Neill Franklin, Executive Director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and a retired narcotics cop from Baltimore said in a press statement.

“Keeping drugs illegal not only doesn’t reduce drug use, but also causes death and destruction by creating a lucrative black market where violence is the primary tool used to protect profits. The blood of the 60,000 dead Mexicans and countless Americans who have lost their lives in illegal drug market violence here in the U.S. is on the hands of politicians who refuse to fix our clearly broken drug policies.”

The NAACP is also part of the activist project, noting that the drug war has become the new Jim Crow in America, and has led to the purported “land of the free” having the highest incarceration rates of any country in history. The U.S. ranks first in the world in incarcerating its own citizens, with less than 5% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of the world’s prison population. Roughly 500,000 people are behind bars for a drug law violation today. Blacks and Latinos are vastly overrepresented among those arrested and incarcerated for drug offenses, even though drug use rates are similar across racial and ethnic lines.

“The NAACP has joined this coalition to call for an end to ineffective criminal justice policies like the war on drugs and racial profiling that fail to address the real problems of our communities,” said NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous in a press statement. “We must abandon the unsuccessful ‘tough on crime’ approach to justice and adopt a ‘smart on crime’ strategy that places individuals, their welfare and dignity, and community safety at the center of drug policy.”

The Caravan starts in Baja California border town Tijuana in August 11, crosses the U.S.-Mexico border in San Diego, CA, and will travel through 20-plus cities and communities in 10 states—including Los Angeles, Santa Fe, El Paso, Houston, Montgomery, New Orleans, Chicago and New York—before arriving in Washington, D.C., on September 10. The Caravan will officially conclude on September 12 by calling for an International Day of Action for Peace in Mexico.

The Caravan for Peace hopes to talk with Americans and rally them to stop the national emergency devastating Mexico. According to various sources, since 2006, more than 60,000 people have been killed and more than 10,000 have disappeared in Mexico due to violence caused by drug prohibition. Rather than curbing drug use or supply, prohibition has enriched violent traffickers, armed with illegal weapons and sustained by laundered money, both of which flow into Mexico from the U.S. unabated. The militarization of drug policy has only escalated the violence, corruption and impunity, leading to more deaths and disappearances that have torn the fabric of Mexican society.

The U.S.-Mexico border is now more militarized than during the U.S.-Mexico war.

“Instead of keeping communities safe, the war on drugs has become the longest, deadliest and most costly war in U.S. history,” states Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Caravan rallies, marches, candlelight vigils, forums, performance art and more are being planned in local communities. For details about the events planned in each city, visit: Caravan for Peace.

In addition to NAACP, LEAP and NALACC, these include National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement (LCLAA), National Latino Congreso, Latin America Working Group (LAWG), Border Angels / Angeles de la Frontera, CIP-Americas Program, Presente.org, Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), Drug Policy Alliance, Students for Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), Veterans for Peace, Witness for Peace, L.A. Community Legal Center, Hermandad Mexicana Transnacional, School of the Americas Watch, Fellowship for Reconciliation and Global Exchange.

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